Once again team Omega Pharma – Quick Step will be in Spain to open their season. In fact, the riders and team staff will meet up starting Monday, December 9th until Thursday the 19th at Hotel Oliva Nova (Oliva) for the first training camp of the 2014 season.

As usual, the first training camp will be an important chance for the athletes to socialize. The first days of the retreat will mostly be dedicated to preparing promotional material like photos and videos for the communication strategy of the team and their sponsors as they look forward to a new season.

But there will certainly be plenty of training sessions on the schedule.

“We chose this location because it’s quite flat over there and it’s the best way to start training.” OPQS Trainer Koen Pelgrim said. “There we can put together some easy kilometers and if we want we can also go inland to look for some more challenging routes. As we always do in December, we’ll ride lots of kilometers at a relatively low intensity to build up basic endurance but we’ll also do some more specific work. During the camp we’ll simulate some sprints and ideal combinations of our athletes for the Cavendish train and we’ll work on the time trial bike, both individually as well as for the team time trials we’ll be facing during the year. The schedule will be completed with fitness training an evaluation of the current condition with a lactate threshold test that we’ll be performing with the staff from the Bakala Academy. Last but not least, some of the athletes from the team will be busy on the track in Valencia in some aerodynamic and development tests with our partner Specialized, which is always very attentive to technical details and the development of our bicycles.”